


Hiding Places

by orphan_account



Category: Merlin (TV)
Genre: Character Study, Execution, Gen, Magic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-03-18
Updated: 2013-03-18
Packaged: 2017-12-05 18:27:28
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,282
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/726444
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Arthur can hide from a lot of things.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Hiding Places

**Author's Note:**

> I found this in my docs and decided to post it, even though it's pretty standard fandom fare. It was originally going to be a part of a longer piece, which I may still finish, but for now I'm a little stuck. Anyway, here we have Arthur "Daddy issues out the wazoo" Pendragon. Enjoy. Concrit welcomed.

Arthur is five, and he is hiding under his bed. Some part of his five year old mind knows that the sorcerers and beasts his father has told him of are powerful and formidable and unlikely to be hindered in their evildoing by a bed, but nevertheless he feels safer under here. This is a tiny kingdom, more manageable than the one his father rules - the one he will have to rule someday. The room is quiet, and dark, and it’s very dusty under here, but he doesn’t move. If any sorcerers try to get in here he’ll see them coming. He is clutching the toy dagger that Bedivere gave him, and he sits there wide awake until morning, but nothing comes.

*

Arthur is nine, and he’s lying in Gaius’ chamber, the world swimming confusingly before his eyes. He’s been attacked by a sorcerer. They didn’t kill him - at least not this time. Their plan, he dimly understands, was to make him kill himself, and he remembers the dagger in his hand, remembers the way his limbs moved without his consent, the feeling of impotent terror. He tries to surreptitiously flex his fingers now, to test that they’re back under his control. Gaius pauses in his examination to raise an eyebrow, but says nothing. His father’s knights hover in the background, watching. They fear the King’s wrath if Arthur should prove to be damaged in any way.

Is he alright? Sir Bedivere asks Gaius, and Arthur wants to say, I’m right here, you could just ask me, but he can’t make his mouth work, even though he knows the spell has been lifted and the sorcerer is dead. I’m fine, he tries to say, but Gaius and Bedivere are talking over his head as though he can’t even hear them, so he closes his eyes and lies very still, and concentrates on trying to wiggle each of his toes one by one, which is surprisingly difficult.

His father enters the room, and everyone snaps to attention, their backs straight and their eyes trained straight ahead like so many puppets, and Arthur wonders if maybe his father is a sorcerer, too.

*

Arthur is eleven, and he’s about to witness his first execution. He can’t look away as they lead the woman - weak from days spent in the cells - up to the block. He can’t look away because his father is watching him. The sorceress is moving with agonising slowness, and there is nothing he can do to speed it up, to make it be over.

He thinks of his mother as he watches, and that makes things easier. He thinks of his mother’s murder at the hand of magic: at the hands of people who had looked just like everyone else, but were rotten inside. He taps into the hatred inside of him and it strengthens him, allows his breathing to return to normal, allows him to stare at the condemned woman with an eye almost as steely as his father’s. They took my mother, he thinks. They took my mother, and most of my father with her. He lets the hatred fill him up, inflating his chest and straightening his shoulders - and this is a kind of magic too, a kind of alchemy.

He feels a rush of satisfaction when the axe whistles down.

He is dimly aware that somewhere, a child is crying.

*

Arthur is fifteen, and his face is hot with humiliation because Morgana is taunting him again, and his father is looking at him, eyebrows raised, waiting for his response. Arthur knows how this one goes: he must not show any emotion, any weakness. He must pit his wits against Morgana’s and emerge victorious, but he must not be unchivalrous. She is a girl, after all, and two years younger than him. He takes refuge in sarcasm, as he always does, treading the line between insulting and mockingly polite. Morgana rolls her eyes, Uther’s mouth twitches up slightly at the right corner, and Arthur sighs inwardly and goes back to his dinner.

*

Arthur is twenty, and he got into a fight with some idiot in the lower town today. His father will be furious if he finds out - this behaviour is unbecoming in a Prince, and lowers him to the level of a common peasant, scrapping in the marketplace. He shouldn’t have continued taunting the boy after their first meeting, but even now he can’t entirely regret it. I already knew you were an ass, the boy had said, and Arthur laughs at the memory of it, at how good it had felt to be really hated by someone. He wants to take this boy’s hatred and wrap it around himself like a cloak.

Sir Bedivere enters the room and says, Your Highness, your father wishes to see you.

Arthur raises an eyebrow and says, That limp still bothering you, Bedivere? Maybe you’ll be faster next time.

Bedivere smiles and says, Yes sire, I will, and Arthur resists the urge to punch him.

*

Arthur is twenty, and Merlin is holding a goblet that he claims is full of poison, and he won’t let Arthur take it from him. They are both standing in the centre of the banquet hall, hemmed in by a circle of unsheathed blades, and everyone is watching them. There is an obscene hush as Merlin raises the goblet to his lips, and Arthur is frozen by the silence, by the roomful of eyes watching them, and he hates this moment more than he’s ever hated anything.

When Merlin crumples helplessly to the ground, for a moment it’s almost a relief.

*

Arthur is twenty two and he’s standing behind his screen, slowly getting dressed after his bath. He can hear disembodied voices floating through his window, and it soothes him to hear people talking outside, the distant noise somehow solidifying the silence of his chamber, rather than breaking it.

Merlin enters the room, already talking before the door closes behind him, and promptly trips over a chair.

Oops! he calls, apologetically, and Arthur sighs and comes out from behind the screen.

You know, he says, traditionally they’re for sitting on, and Merlin grins.

*

Arthur is twenty eight. It’s dark, and something is moving in the shadows. The very ground is rolling and pitching beneath him. He can’t find Merlin, or Gwen, or his knights. Everything hurts.

The pain gets worse, and the dark grows impossibly darker. The world starts to gently drift to pieces, and Arthur can’t keep hold of any of them. He thinks he is bleeding.

Arthur is twenty two - no, wait, twenty - he is happy, he is terrified, he is angry. He hates. He loves. He hurts.

He is five, and hiding under his bed.

“Arthur!”

He crouches, tries to make himself small and still. Someone is shouting. Everything hurts.

What’s happened to his bed?

“Arthur, for the love of unicorns, just bloody wake up-”

Merlin.

He is twenty eight, and Merlin - Merlin just slapped him in the face.

“I could have you put in the stocks for that,” he says, the words dragging out of his throat in someone else’s voice.

“I’d like to see you try in this condition, your Majesty,” Merlin says, and Arthur laughs weakly.

“What happened?” he asks, rubbing his cheek where Merlin slapped him.

“We’re trapped in a cave,” Merlin says, and he doesn’t sound very happy about it.

“There was something important about you I had to remember,” Arthur says. “Something I found out while I was dreaming.”

“Don’t worry, Arthur,” Merlin says. “You don’t have to remember right now. You’ve been hurt.”

“I feel better,” Arthur says, and he lets himself drift back to sleep.


End file.
